


a star fell

by oogenesis



Category: Inazuma Eleven
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Past Abuse, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 00:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16169813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogenesis/pseuds/oogenesis
Summary: Hiroto pays his dying father a visit.





	a star fell

**Author's Note:**

> takes place two or three years before go. there's hiromido but i felt it wasn't enough to tag for, if you think i should lmk
> 
> title is from/inspired by lonely ufo by pinocchio-p, which always gives me super hiroto vibes for reasons i can't name

Two knocks on the smooth, dark doorframe.

“Come in.”

“Sorry to disturb you.” Hiroto pulls back the door, enters the room in his sock feet, and sits down on the proffered sitting cushion in seiza. Across from him is his father, reclining in a futon, a cane by his side. A teapot and two mugs sit between them.

The room is sunlit and peaceful. Kira Seijirou has decided to spend his last days in his own home, relaxed amidst the traditional landscape and calm atmosphere he’s spent fifty years of his life in; he remains as undisturbed and Buddha-like as ever, only now lying down instead of sitting. The screen is half-open, and the porch and garden are visible beyond.

“Good morning, Hiroto,” says Seijirou calmly.

“Good morning, Father.”

“You look like you have something to tell me.”

He does, in fact. Hiroto takes a breath, lets it out. “Father,” he says, “I’m marrying Ryuuji.”

“The Midorikawa boy?”

They’re all children to him, even now. “Yes.” His heart has climbed into his throat.

A silence dotted with the twittering of a bird outside. “Well,” says the old man peaceably, after a moment, “I suppose there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Hiroto’s heart tightens. So that’s all the blessing he’s going to get.

“We’re giving it about a year to properly plan everything,” he says, feeling a hot prickly need to fill the silence. He doesn’t add so you’ll be dead by then. The implication is already hanging in the air. “It’s—it’s going to be a wonderful occasion. He got me—” he holds up his hand “—this ring.”

Seijirou slowly raises himself up on his elbows to examine it. “A lovely trinket,” he decides. “I’m surprised he could afford it.”

Hiroto breathes out through his nose. They’ve had this conversation before. “He’s not that poor.”

“It is wise to consider the financial situation of the person you’re about to be sharing a future with.”

Hiroto is vividly reminded of girls he’s befriended, times when his father made veiled remarks about Hiroto perhaps getting to know her a little better, he’s going to want a wife soon, isn’t he? A last-ditch struggle against the increasingly obvious. More than one of those girls had about the same financial status as Midorikawa, or lower; no mention was made of it then. It’s transparent. It’s so transparent.

“I’m going to have my own company,” he says levelly. “That should be more than enough to support both of us, as well as whatever children we might have.”

Kira Seijirou makes a half-convinced humming noise. “But you know,” he says at length, “you won’t be able to _have_ any children.”

Hiroto opens his mouth to say _We can adopt_ and then is rocked by a slow wave of cold. Has his own father forgotten where Hiroto came from? There have been subtle hints over the years that Seijirou has never entirely considered the child he plucked out of an orphanage to truly be his son. This is the most blatant so far. Is it because he’s old? His memory too foggy to remember to at least keep up the pretense?

He never changed Hiroto’s last name.

“I’m sure we’ll manage somehow,” he says, “Father,” and throws extra weight behind the last word, but if Kira Seijirou hears the jab he doesn’t acknowledge it. 

“Mmm,” is all he says, rumbling on the breath, and then the quiet sounds and colors of the garden outside drift into the room, filling the space. The cups of tea give off almost-invisible wisps of steam between them; Hiroto still hasn’t taken a sip.

His father breaks the daylight silence. “What are you going to do with the company when I’m gone?”

The serene matter-of-factness of an old man on his deathbed. Hiroto’s hands curl into fists on his knees. “I’m going to dismantle the weapons facilities,” he says. “Completely.”

“Completely?”

“Yes.”

They’ve skirted around the topic. There have been implications, pointed remarks and meaningful ellipses; it’s a conversation Hiroto’s been afraid to have. Now, in the sunlit room, in the last months of his father’s life, it’s all coming out.

“I see.” Is there a reaction? What kind? Hiroto can’t tell. His bones are jittering a little.

“Starting with the one on Mt. Fuji.” His words are hollow and the memory of laboratories, vaulted underground training rooms, the ache of his bones and muscles forced beyond their natural limits, pool in the bottom of them like dirty meltwater.

“Why?” An entirely benign question. As though this is simply one of the many times he’s quizzed Hiroto on business practices in the hypothetical, as a thought experiment. _I see. Now explain your reasoning_.

“I don’t want to be an arms dealer,” says Hiroto, forcing his voice to remain calm. “I’m not going to sell weapons. I’m not going to _make_ weapons.” _I’m done_ being _a weapon_. “The technology R &D has poured into war-mongering… it could help people in so many ways. We could use the technology from the Aliea meteorite for medical advances instead. We could go public with teleporters and power cores. I want to end the weapons manufacture and divert the resources for that into our other branches. More useful ones. I don’t want to—” His hands are fists, and tight. Underground, bright lights shining in his face, ranged in soldier rows with the other children. “I’m not going to be part of plans for war, ever again.”

A long silence. Seijirou seems to be contemplating his son’s words; his face is as serene as ever and at one point Hiroto wonders if he’s fallen asleep. His skin is tight with tension.

Finally his father says, “It is natural for the heir of a company to have a different vision for its future than the one he inherited it from.”

Hiroto breathes out.

“I wish you the best of luck.”

“Thank you,” says Hiroto, and feels the tension ebb out of him, trembling his hands a little as it goes.

“Are you going to finish school?”

Hiroto thinks. He has a little over a year left. By the time his father—by the time he inherits the company, it’ll probably be about a year even. “I don’t think so. It’ll be hard to balance the transition on top of that.” He hesitates. “I know you’d rather I graduate properly, Father. But I can only manage so much at once.”

“That’s my boy,” says Seijirou peaceably. “You know how to prioritize, and that’s what’s important. It’ll serve you well.”

“Thank you.”

Another silence. The sound of the stream into the garden pond gurgles into the room; the deer-chaser taps out a hollow note. Hiroto remembers the tea in front of him, curls his hands around the cup, picks it up. It’s still warm, the taste light and refined.

“Hiroto?”

“Yes?”

“I’m proud of you.”

“Oh,” says Hiroto, his hands holding the cup hanging at chest level. A rush of warmth is welling up inside him; it caught him off guard and now he can’t stop it. “I—Thank you, Father.”

“I raised you as well as I could,” says Seijirou, turning his half-shut gaze to the ceiling. “I know I made my mistakes, and for that I’m sorry. But your feet are set on a good path. You’ll do great things when I’m gone, I know it.”

Hiroto’s throat is painfully tight. “Thank you,” he says again, past the lump in it. “I’ll live up to your expectations, Father.”

“I’m sure you will,” says Seijirou, and gives a benign smile. “Now, our lawyer is coming in in half an hour, and I’m afraid conversation rather takes it out of me these days; I’d like a nap before he arrives. Was there anything else you wanted to say to me?”

Hiroto looks down at his tea, at the ring on his finger, at the rice mat underneath him. Words catch in his throat. “No, Father.”

“Then I am compelled to shoo you out,” says his father, with a rueful chuckle, and Hiroto places the mug down, flattens his palms against the ground, and gets up, carefully as formality demands. The suspended quiet in the room seems to necessitate slow and deliberate movement at all times. When he’s at the door, something compels him to look back. Seijirou is meeting his gaze.

“I love you, my son,” he says. “Never forget that.”

The moment hangs in the air, the shifting shadows of the leaves outside faint on the floor. At length Hiroto nods, awkwardly. He’s afraid if he responds his voice will crack. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says finally, and slides the door shut behind him. When it’s shut he braces his shoulders and palms against the wooden frame and lets out a sigh.

So this is what it always comes to, in the end. His father forced him into the Aliea program, treated him as a prototype for weaponry, turned him and the vulnerable children in his care into soldiers and left lasting scars. His father cried when he saw the damage he’d done, raised Hiroto from a young age, prepared him for his future and nurtured his progress. His father has done unforgivable things; his father says _I love you,_ ; and it’s all Hiroto can do not to respond _I love you too._

_As he leaves, the rice paper of the door thin and translucent with light, he hears the old man humming a faint and wistful tune._

**Author's Note:**

> to be clear i don't have a shred of sympathy for kira seijirou he can rot. but this is from hiroto's pov so
> 
> comments (feedback, critique, etc) highly appreciated!!


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